Stop This Year Please

So, the big B word is happening now, and the uncertainty is everywhere. Friends are paying lawyers to get their British Citizenship sorted, fed up of being pawns in some crazy political game. Wanting to stay in this country they’ve made their home and have paid into for many years.

Uncertainty is everywhere as now experts are needed to get us out of this mess, but there are no experts as nobody has done anything like this before. In the meantime European workmates are worried as they don’t know what’s happening.

I’m worried because nowhere is there anything saying this is a good thing. I live in an area that voted Leave and yet nobody is stepping up and saying “this is why leaving is a good thing” – they’re all hiding.

This is H’s future now too. This isn’t about mine or Shaun’s now (do we even have a future with rents sky-high and no new affordable houses being built?) – it’s about H’s ten years from now.

I don’t think this country likes itself much, and the people in it… I don’t think they like it much either. It’s the little things. The lady whose chewing gum fell out of her mouth this morning who didn’t even bother picking it up, leaving it for someone else to deal with or stand on.

The pile of Red Bull cans near the bus stop in Hackbridge which becomes a bigger pile every time I go past on the bus. You never see anyone drinking them, or throwing them over into the field but they’re there and getting bigger.

The plastic bottles left on the floor.

The adults who sit on the train with their feet up on the seat.

The kids who do wheelies, swerving all over the main road, not a care in the world especially for the other cars on it.

The people who don’t bother cleaning up their dog poo on the grass outside our house.

The crisp wrappers which gather in our front walled area, a new set every day dumped from the schoolkids and students nearby.

The local teachers who have a sneaky cigarette break by our back wall and leave their cigarettes on the floor (while chatting about pupils of theirs, loud enough I can hear some of what they say – and I have tinnitus).

What do we have to do to make each other like this place again?

I am out of ideas. I never had any in the first place.

I don’t know where to go next.

I said it recently on a Facebook post, but what happened to the United Kingdom of the Olympics? Watching the Opening Ceremony and feeling that sense of pride at what made this country great. Because right now all I see is a Government who are ripping it apart, people being ripped apart and nothing that can bring it together.